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The po­si­tion of Com­mis­sioner for Eco­nomic and Mon­e­tary Af­fairs will re­turn to France, fol­low­ing a re­port that ap­peared in Der Spiegel.

Pierre Moscovici’s can­di­dacy for the po­si­tion of Com­mis­sioner for Eco­nomic Af­fairs should be ac­com­pa­nied by a post of Vice-Pres­i­dent for the Econ­omy, which Jean-Claude Juncker would con­fer upon Jyrki Katainen, known for his ex­em­plary aus­ter­ity bud­get.

“Juncker wanted to es­cape the prob­lems of Bar­roso, who was al­ways re­proached for his obe­di­ence to Ger­many. (Since) the op­po­si­tion of An­gela Merkel to the nom­i­na­tion of France for the post of Eco­nomic Af­fairs was a bit too strong, he has cho­sen to as­sert him­self,” a Euro­pean Com­mis­sion source stated. In re­turn, Ger­many could re­ceive the post of Com­mis­sioner for Com­pe­ti­tion. This would be just as “para­dox­i­cal as the fact that France, with its debts, should have the post of Eco­nomic Af­fairs”, ac­cord­ing to the same source.

The Com­pe­ti­tion port­fo­lio has been in Ger­many’s sights all along, and would com­ple­ment the equally in­ap­pro­pri­ate post of­fered to France.

Gün­ther Oet­tinger, the can­di­date who has un­til now been at En­ergy, was orig­i­nally des­tined for the post of Com­mis­sioner for Com­merce, which would al­low his coun­try to weigh in on the Transat­lantic Trade and In­vest­ment Part­ner­ship ne­go­ti­a­tions. But Com­pe­ti­tion presents even higher stakes. Ger­many is un­doubt­edly the coun­try with the most com­pe­ti­tion files un­der ex­am­i­na­tion at the Com­mis­sion, which could prove prob­lem­atic.

Ac­cord­ing to the EU news and pol­icy site EurAc­tiv, Juncker plans to meet Pierre Moscovici in Brussels on Thurs­day, in or­der to con­firm him in his new role. The hy­po­thet­i­cal new Com­mis­sion post to han­dle ques­tions of in­vest­ment re­mains in sus­pense; this port­fo­lio could fall to Katainen, or be as­signed to another Com­mis­sioner.

Juncker will present his new team next week (Septem­ber 8-10). Among the points up for de­bate, it is pos­si­ble that the United King­dom could ob­tain the In­ter­nal Mar­ket port­fo­lio, cur­rently as­signed to France. In this case, the UK would see fi­nan­cial ser­vices ex­cluded from the clas­sic re­mit of the port­fo­lio.

How­ever, the dig­i­tal agenda, which un­til now has been in the hands of the Dutch Com­mis­sioner Neelie Kroes, would also be in­cluded in the post, which has been tai­lored specif­i­cally for the UK, whose Prime Min­is­ter, David Cameron, di­rectly op­posed the nom­i­na­tion of Juncker for the pres­i­dency of the Com­mis­sion.

Amongst the other port­fo­lios un­der dis­cus­sion, Greece, whose coastal ter­ri­tory leaves it par­tic­u­larly ex­posed, will be en­trusted with Im­mi­gra­tion, while Kristalina Ge­orgieva, the cur­rent Bul­gar­ian com­mis­sioner re­spon­si­ble for hu­man­i­tar­ian aid who was a strong can­di­date to re­place Cather­ine Ash­ton as EU for­eign af­fairs chief, is likely to be­come bud­get com­mis­sioner.